Apprenticeship Since the economy began to act as a social science for empirical and theoretical be taken into account partially true nature from the point of view of each school economist or economists, but has not really taken into account so that the effects produced by man in the environment have been more than evident and their consequent adverse effects on humans.
This suggests that most economists have ignored the problem of production on nature, environment, resources and living things, because it affects us directly.
Using the latest studies on Earth, we have realized a big problem that comes to humanity as is the destruction of the environment and our surroundings, and therefore our livelihood and our way of life as we know now. Since it is a problem at the global level and not only conflicts between nations or group of nations, this is a major problem and that human beings have not yet encountered any problem of this scale.
Without being alarmist, it is urgent measures, a detailed study and sparing no efforts to get to know the current situation and solve the problem if we have a solution.
The environmental problem arises when the raw human welfare in the short term, rather than that of his long term future and that of their descendants, one could say that this how the current economic system, which is the capitalism.
The problem begins when a man does not adapt to the environment, but adapts the environment to your will, begins to change the environment and its relationship with him.
is believed that the real problem with the environment comes with the industrial revolution, with the emission of pollutants and the use of nonrenewable resources and scarce. The rampant use of raw materials, or inputs in industrial production, with its development and the waste produced, its distribution and marketing have produced pollutants that are becoming visible and tangible in our environment.
The effects on significant environmental are: the thinning of the ozone layer caused by CFC gases emitted into the atmosphere, which is leading to increased exposure to radiation emitted by the sun, a temperature increase, melting of polar ice at an unprecedented rate, increased sea \u200b\u200blevels, desalination of the sea, with consequent changes in currents, changes of weather events, death of fish ecosystems and loved for desalinated water, another is the greenhouse effect by emission of gases harmful to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and fluorides, these gases cause a layer in the atmosphere not allowed to enter or leave the heat and is causing a considerable increase in temperature around the globe. Significantly increasing degree Celsius across the globe every three years due to the greenhouse effect, another effect of nature is the use of polluting and low energy, such as burning fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, solid fuels , ...) that contributes to the greenhouse effect, fumes from industrial processes (chemicals, minerals, metals), industrial and nuclear waste will take hundreds of years to stop being dangerous, the destruction of forests, the indiscriminate felling of trees and consequent reduction of oxygen and also cause desertification, use solvents that pollute the water, do not treat waste water, destruction of ecosystems, reduce biodiversity to standardize some species for marketing and regardless of over-hunting of some species until extinction, generate too much waste to a consumer society in which we live and we have nowhere to store it, use fertilizers in agriculture that degrade soil and deplete mineral deposits, pollute the seas, rivers, air, land, ... .
also have to take into account social inequalities, the exponential population growth world ...
What is being achieved with the current economic system, capitalism, is that all they seek is the maximization of profit and cost reduction without taking into account many variables, one of which is the environmental variable, which leads us to lay waste to the environment in which we live and mortgage the future of coming generations who will find themselves with a serious environmental problem and will have to rethink their lifestyle and adapt to the situation we are creating.
The environmental factor has not been dealt with efficiently by economists until recently, until about 50 or 60 years have unleashed social alarm on this issue.
Today this issue has caused countries to cover meetings the issue of environmental degradation, with agreements at the national and supranational. To more than 100 treaties have been agreed between countries.
The most important agreements on the subject of the environment are the Club of Rome (1968), the World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) from which emerged the concept of sustainable development, the Rio Summit (1992), the Kyoto Protocol (1997), is meeting the urgent environmental problem and proposed the reduction of short-term pollution and adaptation of sustainable development (no growth), which is an issue that enunciate more forward, but not study it in depth because this work does not focus on this issue.
Now, let's look at the evolution of economic thought regarding the environment, in what way the subject was approached by different schools of economists, to the current situation has led to a division in how it has to cover the environmental issue between environmental economics (which is a branch of neoclassical economics) and ecological economics (which has a much more critical).
etymological meaning of Economy and Ecology
I began to study the relationship between economy and ecology (the meaning of ecology is clear: it is the branch of biology that studies the relationships of living organisms with each other and the environment) from the etymological point of view. The relationship between economy and ecology is similar. In both cases a suffix referring generically to "science" or "field of knowledge" (-economy, the Greek nomos, "law"-logy, from logos, "science" or "treaty"), is postponed to a indicative of the root object of knowledge. In economics and ecology root informs us very little about the contents of the two disciplines in both the Greek oikos, meaning "home", "home." Thus economy and ecology are both etymologically, fields of knowledge concerning "home." They both have to do in a very general sense the study of what happens and what is done in the "homes" of human societies and living beings in general, respectively. MERCANTLISTAS
history began with the early classical authors we find in the mercantilist. This thought arose in the sixteenth century and lasted until the mid-seventeenth century, when strong economic growth emerges and expands the long-distance trade. The primary objective was the economic power of the state interests and not the welfare of citizens, let alone these interests are focused on the environment. Resource utilization of the country was under state political interest, and trying to increase wealth at the expense of the wealth of neighboring countries. No one thought of the possibility that were over, his only goal was the accumulation of precious metals through trade.
is understood that the mercantilist not take into account the environment and in the XVI-XVII century still lived in harmony with nature, only took account of agriculture as a productive factor in the economy. Physiocrats
The break with the economic thought of mercantilism is produced in the eighteenth century the Physiocrats, economists and Petty, Cantillon, Hume, and its top representative F. Quesnay. Quesnay's Tableau économique developed consisting of the need to measure the effects introduced by the Government's economic policy.
Physiocratic School seeks to reconcile the private economy to the natural economy, the Physiocrats that could only happen in a stable and durable, extending the generation that took place in the natural economy as Linnaeus (s. XVIII). Linnaeus maintained that there is a natural order established and that the man could speak on it, to tilt in their favor, rather than complying with this natural order by unnatural actions to achieve enhanced fruit.
Physiocrats understood the economy as a circular flow is not interrupted, in which the materialized value sectors producing goods and services, which were exchanged for other sectors and consumed. Economists such as Walras argue that insofar as it is to penetrate the way we see the Physiocrats, it is recognized that for them the idea of \u200b\u200bwealth was essentially linked to the idea of \u200b\u200bmateriality. From this point of view, they considered in effect, supplying the agricultural class as the class of owners, manufacturers and traders and as such constituted the productive class par excellence.
Economy policy had paid attention to the value created in the economic and transferred in the flow of the national economy, but had virtually ignored the physical, material or energy, goods and services which embody these flows, which indicates that did not take into account the environment variable. Physiocrats concepts we are currently serving to recreate some minimum economic elements that validate the efforts of economic valuation of environmental impacts. CLASSIC
mid eighteenth century, we can say that emerged led by the classical economists Adam Smith and his famous work "The Wealth of Nations" (1776).
Classical economists argued that the state's role in the economy implies that non-interventionism and public interference is wasteful and corrupt, and that the State should deal only with matters of defense, justice and public institutions with a high collective benefit, not took into account that the state's role could be to establish an adequate legal framework for the conservation of the environment, as currently required.
Adam Smith's contribution was to analyze how markets organize economic life and getting rapid economic growth, he argued that prices in the short term the market dictated, and long-term prices are determined solely by supply factors, which are the production costs of enterprises, which shows that these costs did not take into account the "non-economic" (material and energy) production industrialism.
In this issue, the classical authors included a variable factor such as limited land and take into account, and gave the ownership of natural resources to be something unlimited and indestructible. This is affirmed when referred Say "men enjoy certain goods which nature provides for free, such as air, water, sunlight, but not these goods to those usually given name wealth. This is reserved for those having a value (for change) that they own which becomes the property of their owners. The wealth is in proportion to this value: it is great if the sum of values \u200b\u200bthat make up a considerable, is small if the values \u200b\u200bare. In Plato's view of classical economics, and specifically Say, how resources are inexhaustible not fall within the study of economics.
But there was a classical economist can be referred to as the most "green" was Malthus, because he approached the Physiocrats thoughts, I thought the food production and carrying capacity should be a population (without trade), and from an environmental point of view thinking in an interaction between economics and biology. MARXISM
mid-nineteenth century, Marxism, led by Marx (1852) and Engels (1880) and conducted a comprehensive critique of capitalism, especially Marx in "Capital."
Marxists believe that the starting point for the analysis of contemporary environmental crisis is in commercial production itself. While pre-capitalist production of use values \u200b\u200bhas its limits in meeting the needs of commodity production to increase the gain has no limit. This difference, as simple and general, is the basis of depletion of natural resources at a pace never suspected in the history of mankind, and the generation of waste (pollution) in an unlimited extent.
But Marx makes a distinction between economic and physical development when such concerns would have required, for otherwise the economic take to the field of physics and biology, the problems of degradation of physical and biological environment outside the world of production and value to that limited his vision of economics. Although Marx and Engels
were sometimes concerned about environmental problems or environmental reasons, Marx shows a concern for the loss of soil fertility caused by capitalist agriculture, the physical separation of the economic disconnect from the natural sciences, the operation of the cycles of energy and materials and not oriented towards economic management resources.
In the following years, neo-Marxism led by James O'Connor (1973), has promoted an update of the economic ideas of Marx and Engels attempts to incorporate environmental issues and criticizing some of the positions of classical Marxism.
NEOCLASSICAL
mid-nineteenth century, comes another revolution in economic thought, the revolution marginal headed by Jevons, Walras and Robbins are regarded as neoclassical. They have a growing use of mathematics with which formulated the theory of utility. These authors make a distortion of economics, saying that natural resources are only useful source of potential and real not so fell outside the field of study of economics. They also contend that the Physiocrats erred in separating the economic from the physical.
Already in the twentieth century, Keynes tried to represent an idea of \u200b\u200baccounting economic system in which natural resources were excluded and the environment, Keynes's remark, often quoted, that " long run we are all dead, "provides guidelines to address economic problems with a very short termism appropriate to consider environmental issues, which are often long-term problems, but increasingly are immediate problems. It was
Pigou (1920) prior to Keynes who begins to take expressions as "external diseconomies" which covers the issue of economic resources management in his book "The Economics of Welfare." Here begins what we call the environmental economy which encompasses part of the school of neoclassical economic thought, which we will see in the next step.
ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMY
Environmental economics, also known ecocapitalismo, is the name adopted in neoclassical economics where ecological issues apply their methods.
We will set the foundation for understanding this model and in what areas is centered, and then to target their supporters and critics who have received these approaches, which is included within the present capitalist economic system, and therefore the measures taken in this model are within mainstream economics.
Neoclassical economics contends that the use of resources, even if they are produced but simply removed and destroyed (as with fossil fuels), no necessarily a degradation of resources from the economic point of view, since we may run out before will be replaced by new resources. Before this problem arose
environmental economics. This neoclassical approach is much more formalized than the classic but with lower reserve of environmental issues, at least in some authors as Hotelling, Gordon, Scott and Pigou. The latter, in his book "The welfare economics" was the first to bring terms like "diseconomies external to describe the negative impacts of economic activity, calls for state intervention to correct market failures through rates and the market acts as an allocator of resources to curb those activities whose "social costs" significantly exceed the "private costs", resulting in strong negative externalities (or to encourage those activities occurred otherwise), making it through taxes on polluters (Pigouvian tax) or subsidies for them not to or pollute less than what is called "optimal level of pollution, which is to give a maximum contaminant level for each staff member concerned the dispute.
was in 1960 when the British economist Ronald Coase published his work "The Problem of Social Cost" which was implicit in the theorem that bears his name. In 1991 he received the Nobel Prize in economics for his theorem, among other things.
Coase argued that the problem lies in economic and legal terms that mainly under certain ideal conditions, free competition would lead directly to 'internalize' externalities, solving the economic problem that gave rise to environmental impacts without taxes or other administrative interventions, and criticizing Pigou approach.
The "Coase Theorem" is the power of being able to "internalize externalities" in the market under well-defined assumptions and property rights under an institutional framework. Therefore, the first thing to establish is the legality of externalities, so that will govern the state and there may be a market where you can market and to negotiate those affected by externalities, the market remained the allocation mechanism resources.
internalize externalities is, under assumptions of free market, adding to the market price of pollution by the production of goods or services through design of property rights on the environment, provided they can be exchanged freely transaction costs are zero, and can be exchanged in a perfectly competitive. At the same time assumes that whenever a resource or environmental use any, is appropriate and, therefore, valuable and interchangeable, and management falls within the provisions of economics, no longer an externality to become something that is solution in the marketplace and treatment within the conceptual apparatus to the use of this discipline, as we know, this solution gives the optimum economic character, that a minor role assigned to the State in which the State should act only in regulation, economic sanctions, subsidies for remedial action and the creation of a tradable permits market externalities. These permits will produce nearly the same effect, the incentives not to provoke such negative externalities, than taxes. Since a market for these permits would encourage the elimination of these externalities, rather than simply to stay below the limit set by the State (so as to sell their permits). If the State wants to reduce externalities over time can design permits so that the external force to reduce a fixed amount every year.
The drive back to the existence of very different and uncomfortable externalities and high social cost, has given rise to attribute the Coasian argument greater generality of the author had given him.
These theories were welcomed by neoclassical economists because a minor role assigned to the State and the environmental problem was solved in the market. This theoretical tool, environmental economists made progress in implementing policies to address environmental problems. On the one hand, creating mechanisms of control and planning of natural resource use and waste generation
ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS
Today comes a critical focus in current economic thinking is the alternative to the branch of neoclassical economics, are called green economy that promote sustainable development could be defined as the obligation we have to meet our needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The concept of sustainable development was coined in the report "Our Common Future, World Commission on Environment and Development, this report is called the Brundtland Report.
These economists promote development without growth through sustainable development, adding the environmental variable in economic studies and on the basis that the economy is part of the energy flows in the laws of thermodynamics. These laws are contained in the "general systems theory" (1950-1968) published by the German biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy and sets out three basic premises:
- there are systems within systems
- Systems are open
- The functions of a system depends on its structure
This shows us the economy is in interaction with other sciences and the economic study has not taken into account some of the interactions that exist in our society and that therefore economic science should be a multidisciplinary science.
conclusion, we observe the evolution of economic thought has abandoned an issue as important as the environment. In a globalized economy as and the interrelationships between countries are growing so we should keep in mind that globalization is not that the markets, people, technology, globalize, they also have to globalize the problems, since it is a global problem, ie , global.
